In a series of events not unlike the Founders' many attempts to engineer an existing race into a servitor race, experiencing many failures of varying degrees of severity before finally developing the Jem'Hadar, Iconians made many attempts and had many servitors before achieving success with the Heralds. In Ancient Iconia, rather than searching the galaxy for an alien race to manipulate as the Founders did, the Iconians focused on creatures indigenous to their home world. The species that ultimately became their Heralds began as livestock.
The Qholgasi were one of the first attempts at using benign, non-predatory, wild mammals native to Iconia. In that age the Iconians, though very advanced and capable of miraculous accomplishments with genetic manipulation, had not fully perfected the science. As they attempted to modify the physical forms of the Qholgasi from small quadrupedal tree-dwellers to upright bipedal creatures in the image of the Iconians themselves, to improve their intelligence and modify their behaviors, they found that the creatures' inherent sense of independence and obstinance only increased with each iteration.
Ever-hopeful, confident in their intelligence and knowledge, arrogant in the belief they could accomplish whatever they desired, the Iconians continued their attempts longer than they should have. By the time the species was finally abandoned as "incompatible" with the requirements of a servitor race, they were not only sentient, but highly intelligent. There ensued moral debates among the Iconians about whether the specimens should be destroyed or simply exiled, and The Whole ultimately resolved to preserve the developed prototypes - fifty-eight in all. The Iconians built a village on a distant island continent and left the Qholgasi to fend for themselves.
There they remained for tens of thousands of years, evolving, and advancing on their own. By the time the Ikkabar and the Dinasians had grown sufficiently irritated with the Iconian Empire to begin planning an assault, they approached the Quolgasi and allied with them. Unlike their rivals, the Ikkabar and Dinasians (and other races in the coalition forming against Iconia) had no qualms about sharing their knowledge and technology with the less-advanced Qholgasi, and soon the once-primitive species had achieved equality with their allies.
The Quolgasi had their own reasons to despise the Iconians, not the least of which being how they were abandoned to their small continent with some very nicely engineered architecture - and very little else. Their oral history told of extraordinarily difficult times in those early years, times during which their people were almost rendered extinct. Their stolid determination and innate perseverance saw them through to prosperity, but they ultimately rejected their once-revered absentee gods. When they learned that the Iconians weren't gods at all, hearing the complaints and accusations of the allied coalition races, their anger and hatred for the masters that had made and then abandoned them was stoked to white-hot fury.
The Qholgasi not only participated in the destruction of Iconia, they led the charge. After Iconia had been raised and their vengeance exacted, the entire Qholgasi people headed out into the Beta Quadrant to find a new home.
* * *
Talanak, a 23rd Century Vulcan xenosociologist and erstwhile philosopher, would have been fascinated with the plight of the Qholgasi society after finding and settling a planet designated "Caonus 5" in Federation astrometric charts, but which they renamed Qholgar Prime, in the H'atoria Sector. Talinak spent much of his career studying the effects of cultural interference by advanced spacefaring races on primitive cultures and hypothesized that a species given technology beyond their development would suffer one of two inevitable outcomes if the source of knowledge and technology ceased contact: they would either, over time, abandon the technology and revert to their primitive state...or they would destroy themselves.
The Quolgasi came very close to the latter before resorting to the former. Their "benefactors," the Ikkabar and the Dinasians artificially inflated the Quolgasi's technological capabilities to suit their own needs, channeling the race's anger against their former masters. Once the Iconians were defeated, the Quolgasi were essentially forgotten. As they worked to rebuild their culture and forge a new home, they inevitably fractured and factionalized. Some wanted to return to their agricultural roots, while others couldn't let go of their aggression after the war. Some desired scientific and technological pursuits, to maintain and even advance their knowledge and abilities.
As noted previously, the Quolgasi people were inherently predisposed to intractability. When you get four or five groups of intractable fanatics opposing one another, the results are often disastrous. In the Quolgasi's case, it was nearly an extinction-level event. Over ninety percent of their population was eradicated. Ultimately, the remnants were able to put aside their differences. Most of their technology had been destroyed by that time, and what was left lacked the parts and the manufacturing infrastructure to repair or replace. And so, the Quolgasi returned to their agrarian roots.
Thus, they lived for many millennia, abandoning most of their technology and returning to working the land. Science and engineering were all but outlawed in their society – technology being stigmatized as the magic of the demons they had vanquished. A whole mythology sprung up around the Demon-Gods and how ancient heroes had turned their terrible magic against them, destroying them and freeing the Qholgasi people from enslavement.
There were some, though, after the civil war that had nearly annihilated them, who clung to technology and science and engineering. They retreated in the early days to a distant continent and kept their knowledge alive. They were outcasts. Curiously, where the majority of their people turned to agrarianism and simplicity, the rate of procreation was very high, while among the outcast intellectuals, it was the opposite.
The naturalist segment of the population retained the moniker of “Qholgasi” for their people. The technologists, however, took the name “Ephrendi,” or “The Advanced,” in the Qholgasi language. They became quite advanced in geology, chemistry, biology, physics, astrophysics, medicine, and all aspects of the sciences. They were even capable of building and operating warp drives, but they did not.
The Ephrendi retained the knowledge that other species were out among the stars, and that every other race they had encountered had manipulated or enslaved them. They were aware that the use of warp technology would attract attention and had decided that it was attention they did not desire.
* * *
Damar-ko landed his ornithopter six kilometers outside Dan’din, a Quolgasi coastal settlement he’d been studying. As an Ephrendi, Damar-ko’s mission was risky. Scientist Caran-la had drilled into him the need to not be spotted by their primitive cousins. Discovery could disrupt their society in unpredictable ways, and long-held animosity against technology could put his life in danger. And yet, as he wended his way through the maze of tall, arching Azok tree roots that walled off his landing site from Dan’din, in his left hand he clutched the small satchel of isolinear storage shards he’d promised to deliver to Tama-ar. Damar-ko had been here many times – weekly trips over 18 months’ time. He’d met Tama-ar about six months previously.
Tama-ar was a highly intelligent, inquisitive, and quite beautiful Qholgasi girl. Her passion for learning was matched, in his estimation, only by his own. He’d begun bringing her textbooks and manuals and theoretical papers, engineering schematics, and all manner of educational materials shortly after they’d first met. She had consumed them voraciously and each time they met, she asked for more.
If Damar-ko was being honest with himself, which he was usually pretty good at – except where Tama-ar was concerned – he’d acknowledge that he was fanning the flames of a serious crush. She learned more quickly than anyone he’d ever met, particularly when it came to engineering and technology. The past few times he’d seen her, she’d dived head-first into warp mechanics and power generation. Today, he was bringing her a veritable library of schematics and research on artificial singularities, quantum eddy theory, string mechanics, and plasma management. As he arrived at their usual meeting place in the forest, he silently mused that in a few months she’d be able to build her own starship.
The boy looked around their little campsite. Tama-ar wasn’t there, which was unusual but not worrisome. He’d put down his heavy rucksack in preparation for laying out his camp when he heard something crashing through the forest toward him. Looking up, he saw Tama-ar running toward their clearing, vines and hanging foliage battering her as she ran. She paid it little mind, a look of terror on her face as her long legs carried her rapidly toward him.
“Damar!” she shouted, waving a hand, “we have to go! Now!” In her right arm she had something large – almost the size of his gear pack – wrapped in some kind of fur or cloth. She was almost to the clearing when he heard the whining, grunting sounds of griffhounds in the distance and one loud and angry but otherwise unintelligible shout of an adult male Qholgasi.
Damar-ko stood in shock. As she ran straight to him, he dazedly said, “Tama, what have you done?”
“There’s no time for that, Damar-ko,” she said, puffing to catch her breath, “they’re going to kill me, Damar. They’re going to catch me and imprison me and kill me if we don’t…go…now.” She grabbed him by the hand, then, and started pulling him back the way he’d come – back toward his shuttle. He resisted half-heartedly, but there was a barking screech of a griffhound quite a bit closer and his resistance evaporated. He snatched his pack up by one shoulder strap and sprinted back toward his ornithopter.
* * *
“Damar-ko, I am very disappointed,” Chief Scientist Lokan-sa said, pacing at the head of the table in front of the wall-sized display, now dark. The muted light of dusk over the Ir’ta-an Peaks filtered through the polarized windows, throwing shadows over the room. Damar-ko and Tama-ar were seated across from each other at the large, ruddy wood conference table.
“Yes, Chief Scientist,” Damar-ko said, hands in his lap and head lowered, looking down at them.
“You have violated our Principle Law, directly interacting with the Qholgasi, and sharing our technology and knowledge with this…girl.”
“Yes, Chief Scientist.”
“You have risked her life, you have risked your own life, and put not only the lives of the Ephrendi people at risk, but also those of the Qholgasi people. If they were to decide to come here and attack in numbers, we would have to defend ourselves.” The salt-and-pepper bearded scientist stopped his pacing and strode to the table, banging his hand against it to punctuated his phrases, “Do you know,” BANG, “how many lives,” BANG, “you may” BANG, “have” BANG, “ended” BANG, “with your careless behavior?!”
“Tama-ar is very intelligent, Chief Scientist, and she swore to be discrete.”
Lokan-sa looked about to burst into a violent rage at his words, but it passed in only a moment. The anger drained from his face like hot kaaf pouring out of a pitcher, leaving behind only resignation and exhaustion. “She may have so sworn,” the scientist said, rubbing a hand over his fact, “but she was not discrete enough, was she? Did they see you leave?”
“I cannot say for sure, Chief Scientist,” Damar-ko said earnestly, “but they were still within the forest when I lifted off. The foliage of the Azok trees are thick this time of year, and the root base is thick and difficult to navigate. I do not think I was seen.”
“Well, there’s that small blessing, I suppose,” the Chief Scientist said. With luck, the Qholgasi will not think their daughter abducted and come looking for her – though it would take them many cycles to find us here without transportation.”
“They will not come for me,” Tama-ar said demurely.
“What was that?” Lokan-sa asked, seeming to notice for the first time that she was sentient.
“They will not come for me,” she repeated. “The Qholgasi, too, have a…what did you call it? Principle Law. We do not use technology beyond simple tools and fire. It is not because we have forgotten what technology is, it is because the legends and parables tell us all too well the evils technology has inflicted upon our people in the distant past. I violated that law by building this.” Tama-ar hefted the object she had carried with her to Damar-ko, on the journey to Ephren’dahar, and had held in her lap since they were brought to this room.
“Using the learning I received from the archives Damar brought…that is, Damar-ko brought me. I built this quantum phase conduit inducer. I just wanted to see if I could do it. I chose this because I reasoned it was relatively safe – a device for channeling plasma where it needs to go, using quantum properties to form conduits in the space around it. I never built anything to actually generate electro-plasma; no reactor, no amplifiers or wave focusers – just a conduit inducer. And…” the corners of her mouth twisted up into a barely perceptible grin as she closed a circuit on the device’s outer shell, causing it to hum to life, glowing from within and creating visible distortions in the air around it. “…it worked,” she added.
Damar-ko turned his head slightly away from the Chief Scientist to hide the grin that suddenly burst across his own face at his superior’s look of shock. Tama-ar turned the device off and it darkened and quieted before continuing. “Someone,” she said, “saw it and heard it and came to investigate. I was found out. There was a great deal of shouting, and I heard words like ‘criminal’ and ‘evil,’ and then ‘banish’ and ‘execution.’ I grabbed my device and ran to where I knew Damar-ko would be. I knew he could get me safely away.”
Now it was Tama-ar’s turn to hang her head, “and that is why they won’t come for me,” she said. “There will be those who want to, but I’m certain my mother and father will argue on my behalf. I’m sure they are upset, but they won’t want me executed. They will convince everyone that if I am gone, whether by my own will or not, I am no longer a threat to them. I have, in essence, banished myself.”
* * *
The Ephrendi were vigilant for months after that, sending ornithopters to scout from a distance and see if there was an army of Qholgasi marching toward them. There was not. Tama-ar was enrolled in an engineering apprenticeship, but she proved quickly that she hardly needed it. She asked many times whether the Ephrendi had starships and over time eventually learned the truth: there were. They were all powered down, however – dark and dormant – lest powering them up draw unwanted interstellar attention.
Tama-ar patiently formulated a plan. Over the next several years she was assigned to maintaining reactors and plasma flow systems, since she’d shown both interest and aptitude in the field. She went about her duties obediently and meticulously. In her free time, however, she developed a design for an orbital vehicle. It would apply antigravity principles to rise through the atmosphere to where the air was thin, then a burst from thrusters would free it from Qholgar Prime’s gravity well. She would tow a dark and defunct ship along with her and use her thrusters to put as much distance between herself and the planet before transferring to the starship, powering it up, and leaving her world behind.
The ascent platform was relatively simple in design and construct. Cargo transit sleds were abundant and eight should be sufficient to form the base structure. Minor modifications to their antigrav systems would give sufficient strength to her needs and thrust could be provided by compressed gas passed through ion exciters and ejected using electromagnets. Power would come from an array of batteries – the platform would be single-use and abandoned in orbit, so warranted nothing fancier than needed to do the job.
Tama-ar’s original design called for a pressurized capsule to serve as a control cab for the platform, but with a species that hadn’t ventured into space in millennia, there was no equipment she could salvage one from. It would have to be fabricated, and if she got it wrong it would potentially be the last mistake she ever made. Before she got to that knotty design detail, though, she had to find an appropriate ship, repair it, and figure out how to get it out in the open so it could be lifted into the stratosphere.